News, Analysis and Perspective for Solution Providers and Technology Integrators

‘What we’re working on at Microsoft is more analogous to like the transistor that became our modern computer environment,’ Microsoft Azure chief Jason Zander says, referring to his team’s quantum computing efforts. ‘I’m pretty sure I have a couple of future Nobel Prize winners on the team.’

Microsoft Azure executive vice president Jason Zander counts the intelligent edge, drones, Microsoft HoloLens and quantum computing as some of the next big things in technology that stand to transform industry.

Zander, who’s been with Microsoft for nearly 27 years, heads the second largest public cloud provider, which trails No. 1 Amazon Web Services but is gaining ground.

He encouraged audience members at IHS Markit’s CERAWeek energy conference in Houston to “look past the buzzwords” when it comes to technology presentations and offerings.

“You’re going to see lots of PowerPoint that throws out words like IoT and AI,” he said. “The really big difference of what we’re doing is we’ve been doing this for years. I do over four trillion messages a day in IoT worldwide.”

Here’s a look at what Zander had to say on a variety of game-changing technologies – and his start in computing at the tender age of 10.